


Suffocation Keep

by smoaksignals



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Arrow 3x07, Draw Back Your Bow, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 13:44:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2654162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smoaksignals/pseuds/smoaksignals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity and Ray have a heart to heart about their shared moment; Felicity and Oliver have a head to head about his mantra regarding his approach to life; an innocent fern almost meets its demise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Suffocation Keep

**Author's Note:**

> This is simply something to make me feel better about "Draw Back Your Bow." This is not a masterpiece, by any means. Fair warning: this does not end with Oliver and Felicity together...yet. Also, I actually like Ray Palmer, and I took the opportunity to flesh out his character (and perhaps his motives) my own way, but this doesn't end in Raylicity either. I say no more -- read on, my lovelies.

The feeling deep in her belly wasn’t entirely foreign. It was her gut acknowledging her anxiety in the fact that there was no going back now. 

She’d kissed Ray Palmer. Her _boss_. And she’d been ready to go further, if she was being completely honest.

The ride up in the elevator this morning wasn’t taking as long as it usually did, and with each ding to the next floor her heart fluttered a little fast. Eventually, the doors slid open to her floor, and she breathed in and out in a heavy sigh before stepping off.

_Oh boy._

Gerry was at his desk already. “Morning, Ms. Smoak,” he said, smiling and standing. “Coffee this morning?”

Her smile was forced and tense when she replied, “God, yes. Please. Biggest cup you can find. Extra caffeine.”

He nodded before leaving as she walked into her office and plopped into her chair, her eyes glancing in one swoop to and away from the spot they’ve been standing when...it happened. 

“Get a hold of yourself, Felicity,” she whispered, turning on her computer. 

The fact was, she didn’t know exactly how she felt about the kiss just last night. It had been nice. More than nice. Unlike her last two kisses, it wasn’t a farewell to what might have been if...fill in the blank. If she didn’t have this strange habit for falling for unavailable super heroes, for one. 

However, Ray had pulled away first and reiterated before walking away that his intentions were platonic. So _clearly_ he regretted the kiss, hence her overwhelming anxiety. The most frustrating part was that she’d barely even considered him as someone she would kiss, let alone date, before last night. 

Felicity logged into her computer and opened her email, while mentally ticking off the redeeming qualities of Ray Palmer. 

Was he a good guy? From what she’d gathered in the last few weeks working with him, yes. After setting him straight on boundaries -- i.e. stalking is not endearing -- he’d quickly corrected himself, and she’d come to find him very genuine and respectful. Not to mention, he was very appreciative of what she had to offer his company.

Was he attractive? I mean, if you’re into tall, dark, and handsome. And six packs. And really great arms...Then yeah, sure, there was definite appeal to him if any of those things were in her criteria (they were). 

Was he available? Single, yes. She’d learned from her own experience that being single didn’t mean available, however, and his sudden change of heart had left her wondering. 

Was he leading a double life that would result in her being left behind in the end, questioning her role in his life? All evidence pointed to no, which was a huge plus.

He wasn’t Oliver. And while her love for Oliver was still very present, haunting her every being from day to day as she kept smiling and playing like she was okay because she had a job to do and a team she couldn’t let down, she couldn’t help but think that most of Ray’s appeal was just that -- he wasn’t Oliver. 

Sara’s death had awakened something inside Felicity. She’d come to realize that she desperately needed to be someone outside of the Arrow Cave. In the two and half years being the Girl Friday and sidekick and teammate and resident hacker for Oliver, and recently being stuck in this limbo of being more than friends but less than lovers, she didn’t entirely know who she was anymore. And just as had happened five years before, she was on this journey of reinvention and self-discovery. 

Did she really like having dresses and jewelry bought for her? Before last night it was a foreign concept. It was still odd, but not entirely unwelcome. Maybe she did? Or maybe it was something new that she’d just wanted to enjoy once, because it was being offered to her and she was able to take it. 

At the end of the day, Oliver had stated his case. He’d been more than clear. He’d chosen a life of solitude, without her. A life where she simply sat on the sidelines, watching him but never touching him. She knew he loved her. It was what she had wanted him to feel for her for so long, but now she didn’t want it because it only made things worse. His words to Cupid -- to her -- had been the straw on the proverbial camel’s back. 

Which, loathe to admit it, had perhaps been her primary motivation to allow Ray to kiss her. Not her proudest moment, but…

The appointment alert sounded from her computer, and she opened her eyes, not realizing they’d been shut. 

_Meeting with Ray. Frak._

Gerry walked in with her coffee, his apology at the underwhelming size of the cup evident on his face. Felicity stood and reached for it. 

“You’re my hero,” she said, sipping at the black elixir of life immediately. 

He smiled before turning on his heels to go to his desk. 

A few more sips, and then she grabbed her tablet and a folder of papers, bracing herself for a world of awkward.

 

>>>\---------->

What the hell had he actually expected to happen? He’d taken his confrontation with Carrie Cutter as yet another opportunity to make his point clear to Felicity -- he loved her but he wasn’t going to be with her. Had he really been stupid enough to think that she wouldn’t take that as her final cue to move on? 

Selfishly, he’d always hoped she’d wait for him on the off-chance he got his shit together. Yet he’d also meant what he’d said to Diggle -- he just wanted her to be happy.

Oliver jumped down from the salmon ladder and moved over to the punching bag, and he didn’t hold back as he imagined the bag as himself.

In truth, this mantra he’d adopted of not being able to be with her despite what he felt because the path he’d chosen was for him. It was what he told himself every morning before he saw her, and every night before he tried to sleep, because otherwise he’d cave. 

He should have caved. 

Not an ounce of him blamed her or hated her for kissing Ray Palmer. Every ounce blamed himself. 

She’d been as clear to him as he’d been to her in the aftermath of their moment of bliss that she wasn’t going to wait for him. 

And she hadn’t. 

What the hell had he expected?

 

>>>\---------->

Felicity stopped just before Ray’s office door, taking in two cleansing breaths before planting a smile onto her face. 

_Nothing happened. Play it cool and professional, Felicity._

As she turned the corner, he was sitting at his desk, but as soon as he saw her he popped up. He smiled, but she could tell it wasn’t entirely comfortable for him, try as he might. 

“Good morning,” she said, mentally patting herself on the back for the lack of quiver in her voice. “I’ve got documents for you to sign,” she continued with her walk, “so that we can send them off to --”

“Felicity,” Ray said.

“Yes?”

He motioned over to the chaise by the window, inviting her to sit without a word. She obliged, gulping as she turned to do so. He followed cautiously, sitting in the chair across from her. 

“We need to talk about --”

“The kiss. Yes. Consider it forgotten. It was the heat of the moment. The diamonds had gotten the best of both of us. Not that I kissed you because of the necklace. Or the dress. Or the anything. It was just you were there and I was there and we were there and --” she clamped her mouth shut to force herself from yammering any further. 

“No, that’s not...That’s not what I mean.” His smile was genuine now, amused, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I don’t want it forgotten, Felicity. There’s just something you should know.”  
Here it was. His unveiling of his secret vigilante life that didn’t allow for companionship or feelings. 

“Three years ago, I was engaged.”

Oh. 

Wait. She knew this. 

“I know that,” she said. 

“You know?” He arched an eyebrow.

“You’re not the only one who does their research. I looked into you when you were...you know…”

“Stalking you,” he said, sheepishly. 

“For lack of a better word,” she said, but smiled. Their rocky start was water under the bridge now.

He cleared his throat, his face set back to serious. “Well, you may or may not know that she was kidnapped and, despite paying the ransom, I never got her back.”

Her heart sank into her stomach, and she could feel the color drain from her face. 

Felicity was usually very thorough in her research, but this fact had slipped under the radar. She had a feeling Ray had made this chapter of his life disappear from the virtual world himself. 

“Oh my god,” she managed to say in an exhale of breath she’d been holding. “Ray, I’m so  
sorr --”

He shook his head. “Please,” he said, his face and tone soft and pleading, “I’m not telling you this for sympathy. It was a nightmare, resulting in a cold case, and part of the reason I came to Starling City was because I needed to start over and feel like I was doing...something.”

Felicity looked at him intently, hurting for him but also curious as to why he was telling her any of this now. 

“Felicity, I…” a bashful, self-conscious grin spread across his face as he shook his head, his eyes looking to the ceiling. He looked back to her, and his next words came out quickly as though to get them over with, “You’re the first person I’ve kissed since I lost Susan.”

She immediately straightened up at the statement, more than visibly taken aback. “Oh,” she managed to say, her mouth staying in an ‘O’ shape for a few seconds longer. 

He nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s why I was so insistent on it being platonic, and why I left in such a hurry.” He moved forward in his seat ever-so-slightly. “It had nothing to do with you, or the kiss itself.”

While she didn’t know exactly what any of this implied, it was a weight off her shoulders nonetheless, and she appreciated that he’d revealed something so personal and painful for the sake of her feelings. 

Felicity reached over and placed her hand on his, which was tensely cupped over one of his knees. He relaxed at the touch almost immediately.

“Thank you,” she said. His brow furrowed in confusion, so she clarified. “For confiding in me.”

He offered a closed smile and nod.

“And you didn’t sign a contract,” she said, lightening the mood. “It was just a kiss.”

She found her own relief in that statement as well.

“Speaking of contracts…” Ray stood up, breaking the very personal moment. 

“Right! Yes. The contracts.” She followed suit and they both moved over to his desk. 

It was business as usual the rest of the day. There were still questions dangling in the air, and she didn’t quite know what any of this meant in the end for her and Ray, but it was nice to simply be whatever they were without complication.

As though the gods had sensed her brief moment of contentment, her phone flashed Oliver’s picture just as she’d shut down her computer. She didn’t even manage a hello before Oliver said, “I need your help.”

>>>\---------->

As Felicity descended down the stairs, she yelled, “Can we at least order a pizza or something? I JUST got off of work and I’m sta --”

She stopped, an expression of alarm washing over her features. 

He knew it was a sight to see. 

Oliver was shirtless in sweatpants, perched on the edge of her console, looking forlornly down at the floor. He was staring at a shattered planter and a disheveled fern. 

“What happened?!” She sped up her pacing, throwing her jacket and purse to the side.

He looked up at her, and at first glimpse, she’d seemed amused, but he knew that his presentation of the whole thing was portraying otherwise, and it reflected in her change of demeanor. “I’m so sorry,” he said, his tone choked and fizzling down to a whisper. 

“Hey,” she said, trying to sound as comforting as possible. She knelt down to the floor and managed to scoop the fern and the remaining soil around its roots into both her hands. “Look, no harm done. Just a little worse for the wear, but not dead.” She flashed a smile at him. 

He sighed heavily, a slight curve to his mouth, then broke eye contact and heaved himself to stand. “I don’t even know exactly how it happened,” he said. 

He knew exactly how it happened. 

“I was in the middle of training and I must have just gotten too close.” More or less the truth.

He’d been kicking the shit out of his punching bag for nth time that day, and when that didn’t seem to do much, he started intensive solo eskrima drills. As if possessed by the new strand of Vertigo, he began to imagine that he was fighting himself again. For the first time in a long time, he lost control of his movements as his emotions anchored onto every swerve and kick until the baton flew from his grasp, striking the fern down before rolling under the console. 

He’d been devastated. Logic fought to make a head, telling him it was just a plant. However, Felicity had given him the otherwise mundane object, which gave it a meaning that he was holding onto for dear life given everything that had transpired since it came into his life. It had come to represent Felicity in a way, and watching it fall to the ground less than 24 hours after seeing her kissing Ray was a blow he’d not been prepared to take. 

Felicity was at the lab table now, clearing a spot for the fern. “I have a container I can place it in for now. I’ll come in tomorrow morning to re-pot it. Just pat down the soil and add some water, and she’ll be good as new.” Felicity smiled before turning to walk to one of the supply closets, Oliver leaning against the table, his eyes fixated on the rumpled greenery. She came back with a large ceramic bowl in one hand, and a cup of water in the other. 

“This should do the trick.” And she went to work saving the battered plant. Oliver watched the same hands that had bandaged and aided to his wounds a hundred times before move to fix what he had broken. 

“I’ll go get the broom to clean up the dirt,” he said.

When he came back into the main room, Felicity was already back to where the fern had originally sat, preening the leaves and fluffing the small branches out. “Tada!” she said, presenting the messy but still alive shrubbery. 

Crisis now averted, he began to sweep the ground and, without having to be asked, Felicity knelt down with the dust pan. They worked together to clean up the mess he’d made, then she dumped and patted the soil into the makeshift pot, adding some more water. 

“Thank you,” he said. He felt ridiculous about the sound of relief in his voice.

“Was that all you needed? My green thumb?” She brushed her hands together over the fern, pieces of dirt raining down over it as she cleaned her hands as best she could. 

“Yeah.”

The look she gave him was skeptical, but he turned away from her before she could read anymore into it. Oliver bent down to grab his t-shirt and slipped it over his head. He was faced away from her, but he could hear she hadn’t moved. 

“Are you okay?” she asked him. 

He turned to her again, forced smile in all its glory firmly planted on his face. “Yeah. Just a little tired. I was at Dig and Lyla’s with Roy late last night,” he said. 

“Oh?” She sounded somewhat disappointed.

“You’d already left for the night when we decided to go. So.”

“Oh,” she cleared her throat, “well, I was at the office late anyway.”

He tried his hardest not to read into what’d she’d just said, given what he’d seen.

There was a moment of awkward silence that settled in for a few moments, which Felicity promptly interrupted. “Well, if that’s all, I’m going to grab a bite.”

She moved to where her purse and coat were, gathering them into her arms. She was heading towards the staircase when he called to her. 

“Felicity.”

She didn’t say anything, just turned to him, her eyes urging him to continue.

“Why do you stay here? With me?”

Her head cocked to the side, but she said nothing.

“I mean, after everything...I need you here. You’re invaluable to the team. But after the way I’ve treated you, I’d understand if you walked away. You’re building something incredible for yourself outside of this cave.”

Felicity bit her bottom lip, laying her coat and purse down again, before approaching him again, slowly. Her eyes were wet, but her jaw set. 

“What we do...It’s bigger than you and me, Oliver. I understand the mission. I understand the dedication. I understand why I’m here and why I need to stay here.”

She sounded like a soldier.

“It is hard sometimes, being here with you,” she sighed, “but just because it hurts knowing that what we do is also what keeps us apart, I know what I can handle. I know what is waiting for me outside these walls.”

_Like Ray_ , he thought wryly, immediately regretting the thought. 

“But I also know that what I do here, with you and Roy and Dig, is something that I can’t abandon and feel like I did the right thing. Not now.”

Oliver nodded, pride and love swelling in his chest, accompanied by the ever-present stain of guilt when it came to her. Suddenly, he couldn’t keep himself from saying it.

“I came to see you last night. At Quee-- Palmer Technologies.” It stung a little to correct himself, but loathe to admit it, the company was thriving without him.

Her eyes widened, and he knew she was asking herself if he’d been there when Ray was there. The answer was of course yes, but he wouldn’t tell her that, because he knew she’d either get defensive or be apologetic, and he didn’t want to trigger either of those reactions from her. 

“Why...When...Why?”

“At Dig’s urging, I’d come to talk to you but then I…”

She was still as a statue, evidently holding her breath. 

“I figured you were gone, so I left before I stepped on the elevator,” he finally said. It felt horrible lying to her, but it was better than the alternative. She breathed out.

If Felicity could see herself happy with Ray, helping run his company, he didn’t want to get in the way of this new path, even if it was torture for him. He’d made his choice, and he was facing the consequences. 

“What did you want to talk about?” She stepped closer to him. 

“I just wanted to say…”

Her eyebrows raised. 

“I wanted to congratulate you. Vice President. My old office. Re-branding and revolutionizing the heap I’d left behind. You deserve everything Ray has to offer you. You’ve earned it. It’s something I should have done for you.”

Felicity’s face fell a little, but then she smiled sweetly at him. “Thank you, Oliver,” she said. “That means a lot.”

They were failing at the practice of personal space again, so he checked himself and took a step back.

That silence settled between them again, but then Felicity bowed her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “I kissed Ray,” she said, still not looking at him. 

And here he thought he’d dodged that discussion entirely. I know, his mind was screaming. 

“Last night. Not before last night,” she was looking at him now, horror written all over face. “Oh god, I just made it sound like that’s why I....But no. God.” She brought a hand up to cover her face. “That was literally the first time. Maybe the last time, I don’t even know at this point. But I had never even --”

“I know,” he said, which silenced her immediately.

“What do you mean you know?”

 

“I mean…” He unleashed a growl of frustration before reverting back to his even-toned, controlled speaking voice, swiping his palm over his stubble before dropping his arm back down. “I saw you. Kissing Ray. That’s why I didn’t come talk to you. I didn’t go there to say congratulations, even though I meant every word I just said, I was going there to--”

“What were you going to say?” she asked, this air of hope weaved into the sound of a challenge.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess I thought I’d know when I got there, but then…” He cleared his throat. “Diggle kept telling me how you were moving on and Ray was wooing you and I kept trying to not let it get to me. But it was getting to me, so I decided to talk to you. After leaving your office I realized that I still didn’t know what I could say to you to make you wait for me, anyway. And then I realized that I shouldn’t have even tried, because it would just make you hate me more.”

“I don’t hate you,” she said with conviction. 

“I’ve been so unfair to you, Felicity. I’d hate me.”

“I’m angry and frustrated and...hurt. But I don’t hate you.” Tears were brimming, and it made him hate himself for her. 

She walked away from him, not to leave but simply distancing herself from him, and leaned against the table opposite to where he was standing. 

“So what’s your game plan now? Because you’re right, if you’d come to me last night without so much as an outline, I’d still be doing what I’m doing now.”

“I don’t have a plan. Do you really think I’d choose to be The Arrow instead of Oliver Queen knowing that it’s the only thing keeping me from being with you if I didn’t have to?” The gravity pull between the two of them had brought them back to standing just inches from each other again. 

“I don’t want you to pick one, Oliver! I’m in love with both of you!” Her hands flew up to cover her mouth. It was the first time she’d actually said she loved him. While it had been obvious to him for quite some time, hearing it made him feel lighter than air for just a moment. “It’s a package deal for me,” she whispered behind her hands. 

“Felicity…”

“You can be both, Oliver. You just keep telling yourself you can’t. You’re the strongest, bravest man I know, but you get so lost in your own head, convincing yourself of all of the things you can’t have, that you don’t even realize you’ve been both Oliver and The Arrow the entire time I’ve known you and you could have everything.”

She was so close to him he could easily kiss her or hug her or simply rest his hand on her shoulder. But she turned away from him, this time to leave. He was speechless, processing what’d she’d just said, when he realized she was almost to the foot of the stairs. 

“I’m working on it!” he shouted to her, which paused her steps. “I’m not asking you to wait for me, but...I’m working on it.”

Felicity didn’t turn to acknowledge that she’d heard him, but her head turned to the side as he spoke, almost looking over her shoulder. She said nothing before she continued up the stairs. 

But he’d glimpsed the smile that had crept over her lips at his words, and to that he smiled back. 

 

>>>\----- The End ----->

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. Comments and kudos are welcome.


End file.
